It’s been a helluva week for royal stories, and a timely reminder that the Murdoch cancer is still among us. But if nothing else, the varietal sweep of history has been both fascinating and hilarious.

Other Windsor soap episodes aside this week, I’m a little suspicious of the one about Richard III having been buried in a car park. I mean for one thing, in those days they didn’t have cars did they? Right then. So that’s all that bollocks deconstructed.

It could be of course that the old psycho hunchback* sorry, loss of pc reception for a second there, the mature mentally challenged spinal malformation sufferer was dug up at some later time. In an era when it was already clear the future was unlikely to lie with horses, perhaps. Thus, as a means of ensuring he wouldn’t be found for ages, the grave-robbers built the world’s first car park and put him underneath, a good sixty years before car parks became one of the joys of modern life.

Or, just possibly (although it’s a long-shot this one) they buried him in a place that later became a car park, the come-lately car park constructors being unaware that Royal bones lay beneath their feet. In which case, ‘Richard III was buried in car park’ as a headline is wrong, innit?

I know this is more Grammar Nazism on my part, but the headline is sloppy, wrong and misleading. One could lose the ‘was’, or one could lose ‘was’ and add ‘found’; one could lose ‘buried in’ for under…and produce a perfect headline thus: ‘Richard III found buried under car park’. But at the BBC, all sense of craftspersonship in the News department left years ago: Paxman seems to me the only one left who gets upset by careless reporting, and he looks so miserable these days, he must be pondering retirement.

Some stories, however, don’t easily lend themselves to perfect headline summation. For instance, ‘Prince Harry found naked in Sun’ could be about his enthusiasm for nude tanning. ‘Prince Harry’s cock on Sun front page’ gets nearer, but we didn’t see one’s member. Also the shower is left out, which seems a bit showerist. So perhaps the best line is:

ROYAL COCK SPLASHED ON SUN FRONT PAGE

It fits the bill for me: Harry is royal, he is a cock, he was splashing about, and thus he became the Sun’s lead story.

Yes, Harry has done it again. ‘It’ being something of an outrageously daft nature, and ‘again’ following in the wake of looking pissed, improperly dressed, and all stations to utterly indiscreet.

This time his crime was to be caught on camera proper undressed an’ no mistake guvnor cor strike me pink. The poor chap has his father’s brains, his mother’s exhibitionism, and his grandfather’s tact.

The trouble with Harry is his ability to walk straight into the media trap time after time after far too much of a good time. Had the Murdoch press and amoral media-hungry slappers existed in Edward VII’s time, I have no doubt that he too would’ve been on The Daily Sunrise’s front page regularly doing highly irregular things….albeit accompanied by slightly more respectful text:

‘His Royal Highness Prince Harry depicted in harmless full frolic with famous socialite Miss Phyllis Butes. HRH is renowned for his sporting interests and must, like all Royal sons, sow some wild oats along the way. In this republican age it is good see that, if called upon to extend the Battenberg line, the second son of our future Monarch should have no difficulty in siring the necessary heirs.’

But this isn’t 1876, it’s 2012: and even the dimmest Royal progeny cannot fail to have noticed that whistle-blowing kiss and tell long ago replaced acceptable fun in private followed by discreet confinements in south European countries for those noble maidens impregnated as a result. We must only thank God, meanwhile, that (left) photography wasn’t invented much longer ago.

I suspect that the smartest King we’ve had in modern history was George V, the instigator of the Royal Christmas broadcast, the inventor of The Royal Family as a national example, and the man who did a better job of marketing the Windsors (while remaining at arm’s length) than any monarch before or since.

He also found it very easy to tell putty from excrement, did George V. He is alleged to have said to the great abdicator – his son the Prince of Wales – in 1928, “Sir, you dress like a cad, you talk like a cad, and you behave like a cad. By God sir, you are a cad. You will ruin yourself within a year – get out of my sight”. G5 was right on the money: Edward VIII ran off with a man dressed as Mrs Simpson in 1936, and was never crowned. Later he leaked secrets to the Nazis and gave vulgar television interviews alongside his trans-sexual partner in the United States. He was indeed a cad.

Will Charles III display the same wisdom when his time comes? I very much doubt it. He allowed himself to be bullied into marriage to a dork. He gives Harry too long a leash. And his political interfering could all too easily render him the next Duke of Windsor. The good news is that we have Wills and – barring tragic accidents – we are unlikely ever to wake up and find ourselves under the merry rule of Henry IX.

The funniest part of Harry’s bigger splash for me was (left) when the Sun defended its ‘story’ by saying that it would’ve been ‘perverse’ to ignore the photos. A bit of instant online research then showed that 75% of Brits thought the scoop wasn’t in the public interest: ergo sum, the Scum was being perverse in running the cock-shots. But that wasn’t the funny part. You can tell that wasn’t the funny part, because none of you are laughing.

For me, the rib-tickler is a Murdoch title pontificating on the nature of perversity. There’s James of course, about whom we need say little beyond observing that his manner is that of a management consultant with a flair for bright colour schemes. And there’s his Dad Rupert, who hates the Royal family because upper class twerps were rude to him at Oxford, synchronises marital and nationality changes, makes psychotic secretaries CEOs, and bangs tables to demonstrate his humility before Parliament.

Past alumni of the Murdoch press include Andy Coulson, Kelvin McKenzie, and Piers Morgan –respectively responsible for multiple perjury, naked darts on telly, false news stories about the British army, and celeb phone hacking antics still to be revealed. Rebekah Brooks’s interests when she wasn’t being a blind Chief Executive included powdering the inside of her nose, perverting the course of justice, baby-sitting for the Camerons, and hacking dead people’s mobiles – this last a rare condition known as Murdoch’s hacrophilia disease by proxy.

Pretty perverse all that, I’d say. So being perverse, Newscorp should’ve ignored the nude Harry shots. And had they done so, the British people would’ve declared them normal. Thus both the Murdochs and the British people are odd. QED.

Bottom line:(gerritt??): My rejoinder to the dirty Digger hypocrite – appropriately in this case – is ‘Freedom of the press my arse’.

Finally, we must turn to the pensioner who passed on his regal genes to Harry Redtop.

His Royal Highness Prince Phillip has been a wonderful consort to the current Queen, adding that dash of humour, sport and controversy one needs with a Monarch as dedicated and squeaky-clean as Elizabeth II. He is also a very rude and demanding man, himself guilty of being a wee over-cocksure in the past. But wee-wee now seems to the main problem facing the old gent, rather than a penchant for dry-land swimming for which he was infamous among certain circles many decades ago.

He is, we are told, unable to play his full Royal role in the Paralympic festivities. Well, he deserves a rest from all this Olympic lunacy. As indeed we deserve a rest from him.

I am still struggling to get regular internet access, but it’s a case of BT not reaching out terribly well rather than some dastardly globalist geopolitical plot. Please bear with me.

Bankrolled Taxidermist has opened a new site, imaginatively called Johnwardtalksbollix. It’s on wordpress, who have allowed it – and still not replied to my abuse complaint. Let’s hope it keeps him busy. Those needing troll training sessions in readiness for visits over there, the email address is the usual one.

*Most historical research I’ve seen suggests that Richard III didn’t have a hump. But he did have a nasty way with hot pokers and young princes.

I take exception against your as usual gross comments if do not agree with some one. To call The Duke a rude and demanding man is way beside the point. I assume you do not know him personally. If so keep shut should be the watchword.

You need to look closer to Prince HARRY and Prince CHARLES. they are of the same gene pool no mistake! Some in my family have red hair/blonde hair and Auburn hair IT MEANS NOTHING… we all look very much like one of our parents.

I beleive that was the furore about Prince Harry wearing THAT, well publicised, uniform. He was making a statement ok -in a crass teeenage – way that he was of German descent a true Royal blooded Windsor.

As I understand it, Richard III was a swordsman of considerable prowess and years of full-on practice had endowed him with considerable muscle development; unfortunately he practised right-handed all the time without training the muscles on his left, hence the lop-sided appearance. Bit like the longbowmen of Crecy and Agincourt. Almost deformed due to the repeated drawing of 100lb+ bows, skeletal remains suggest that they had muscle packed almost four inches deep across their backs which, in turn, were twisted out of line with the repetitive practice from a young age. Think of those poor buggers the next time Larry Olivier starts on about filling the wall with our English dead …

I have heard it said of Richard 111 that he was ‘The Last English King’.
True when you think about it, since him we have had the Welsh, the Scots, & of course, the Germans. Of course they are so well ‘integrated’, you’d never know!

Just a touch of pedantry to correct your gripping narrative. Edward VII was a member of the House of Saxe Coburg Gotha not Battenberg . When Kaiser Wilhelm was told that the British royal family had changed its name to Windsor, her replied “And I am going to the theatre to see “The Merry Wives of Saxe Coburg Gotha”. I must say that Kaiser Bill went up in my estimation when I rad that. I had never thought of him as a man of ready repartee. Although he did remark earlier i a rather bitchy way of Edward VII “My uncle has gone sailing with his grocer” (Sir Thomas Lipton of Lipton’s teas)
Of course, in those days the Battenbergs were known for having a senior admiral in the Royal Navy (who designed something called a Battenberg computer) as well as having rather nice cakes called after them.

It is well known that Queen Maria von Teck (morganatic ducal side branch of the royal house of Württemberg) was furious about the mere idea of a name change as was her husband, King Georg Friedrich Ernst Albert von Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha (agnatic ducal side branch of the royal house of Wettin). They both did not like it at all, in fact they both despised the name change utterly but realized the need for it and gave in to it as they both understood quite well that they had to do so, simply to not get into trouble where it could become possible that the british public would get rid of them after what happened to the Holstein-Gottorps (agnatic branch of the royal house of Oldenburg) in Russia in February of that same year. The british anti-german war propaganda threatened to backfire and ruin the purely german-blooded royals of Great Britain as it had done so in the Russian Empire (amongst other things). The name change was an outstanding public relations masterpiece to stay in power, followed in scale only by the intensive royal behind-the-scenes-work during and after WWI up until today which was done to use the labour party as a means to calm and enclose any socialist/communist danger to the monarchy in the UK.

JHM says that the name change was “an outstanding public relations masterpiece to stay in power”, but we can’t really tell what its effect was, because there’s no way of knowing what would have happened if they had soldiered on without a name change. The government of the day was panicked, probably unnecessarily, by the Russian revolution and by setbacks on the Western front. I’d be surprised if there’s evidence to show that British public opinion at the time cared a toss about the name, one way or the other – but I will gladly give way to anyone who knows better.

@Domestic Extremist – At the outbreak of World War 1 the First Sea Lord at the Admiralty (and most senior post in the Royal Navy) was occupied by Prince Louis of Battenberg. Because of his German origins there was quite a bit of public disquiet about this and a vicious tabloid press campaign erupted despite the fact as Prince Louis himself pointed out he had actually joined the Royal Navy in 1869 a year before a united Germany actually existed. Prince Louis initially remained in post as he had the full support and confidence of King George V but a combination of increasing poor health and the fact that Winston Churchill (now First Lord of the Admiralty and political controller of the navy) wanted to return Admiral Jackie Fisher (the creator of the Dreadnought battleship) out of retirement into his job meant that he was effectively forced to resign. Because of the ongoing anti German sentiment, public vitriol and abuse his family was forced to change their name to the less German sounding Mountbatten.
His son (the later Earl Mountbatten of Burma) was eventually to occupy his fathers same high office in the Royal Navy and to become the last Viceroy of India before being murdered by the IRA in 1979. Overall Prince Louis senior was treated rather poorly by Britain having despite his German origin given very loyal service to the Royal Navy and Crown for over 45 years. Because of financial hardship he was towards the end of his life forced to sell his country home and even his service medals.

How about ElisabethMurdochtalksbollix.
From the James McTaggart Memorial Lecture to the Edinburgh International Festival….
Quothng her father’s words from a generation earlier in 1989 when he spoke of ‘freeing’ broadcasting from the bureaucrats and ‘placing it in the hands of those who should control it – the people’. She added she had learned that vision from her father and “even back then, I understood that we were in pursuit of a greater good – a belief in better’.
Scoff, scoff! How do these deluded people get away with it?

@Liz O’D: I don’t believe a word she spouts. I think she is just paving the way for the Murdochs to continue unchallenged. She would have us believe that she will do things differently to Roop and James and the Red headed one. Yeah, right….

@kfc
Particularly now that the devious numpty Salmond has revealed plans to axe the BBC in Scotland with a state-owned replacement. Now we know what all the schmoozing was about with Digger Murdoch earlier in the year. He’ll have to gain the independent vote first of course! Yet another a***hole career politician with scant regard for the electorate.

The public interest in the matter surely lies in who pays for Harry to cavort with prostitutes in Las Vegas (as reported in the USA) and why he is there in the first place. The pictures are, well, a red herring.

Agree, as I said to my wife last night when she mentioned it that it is our money paying for this nonsense.

My view is I don’t particular care about some pictures of a p*** head with his kit off, it’s the fact that the establishment can see fit to tell the papers what not to publish that is the real issue in all of this.

we only get to hear about the establishment telling people what to publish when its a non event. Not like the silence over the spanish savings drama last week/this week. I mean that takes real power to have a word in quite a few shells and have nought said of something that was truly in the public interest to know about.
but we’re all mushrooms anyhow which is why we come here to maybe get a chink of light.

Well, I am at that dangerous age at which my memories of historical accuracy has become tainted by so much that fact and fiction become so confued as to be entwined. Who cares, a good read and a sort of written equivalent of ‘Spitting Images’ and ‘Gripping Yarns’, all rolled into one.

Yes, the picture I saw he was holding his balls, nothing wrong with that when playing billiards, after all, they need a wipe over now and again, don’t they?
Anyway, if it’s ok for him to go to Afghanistan and fight the Taleban, what’s wrong with getting naked in Vegas?
Coming from such a dysfunctional bunch as that lot, I think he’s doing ok personally.

@JW “johnwardwritesbollix.wordpress.com is no longer available.
This blog has been archived or suspended for a violation of our Terms of Service.
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I recall a fascinating dramatisation called something like the trial of Richard the third. It was two QC’s prosecuting and defending the case against him. The defending QC came up with the startling discovery that Richard’s paintings had been doctored to include a hunchback, this was demonstrated by spectroscopy or something. The summation was that the winners had re-written the book to blacken the loser and in doing so had re-touched his piccys too.
Anyway, sorry if I digress slighly.
Harry is just a rich officer with a standard idea of mess games. If he weren’t royal no pictures and no interest would have been taken of Lt/Capt [or whatever he is now] Wales’s cavorting.
Therefore he’s normal in appetite but abnormally silly in displaying them.

I dimly recall reading a quite enjoyable mystery novel many years ago – The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey. In it, a bedridden detective passes the time investigating the alleged crimes of Richard III, and eventually comes to the conclusion that the man was completely innocent. (And not a hunchback either.)

Harry is an Officer in the British Army. Like all Officers, Warrant Officers and Senior NCOs he will have read the Adjutant General’s code of practice on moral behaviour expected at those ranks and signed that he had read it and understood it.

Contrary to what most civilians think, there is no ‘off duty’ in the Forces. You are on duty from the moment you sign on until the day after you leave and are subject too military law in or out of work, in or out of uniform, on or off leave, every single minute of every single day.

When he gets back to his unit he will be summoned by the Adjutant, keel-hauled, marched into the Commanding Officer, keel-hauled again and then will get for this probably 28 Extra Duties to be done day on, day off (Orderly Officer of the Day who has to remain in uniform in barracks and attend all the soldiers meals along with the 0800, 1800 & 2200 staff parades in best uniform, inspecting the on-coming guard, the prisoners and other defaulters and deal with any immediate discipline and security matters) ), be ‘invited’ to make a large donation to a military oriented charity or the Regimental Association and offered the ‘opportunity’ to pay for the champagne, wine and port bill for the next Regimental Dinner.

Yup, been there, done that, even got the t-shirt! Luckily I was a minor transgressor, but being awarded the honour of doing an additional 7 Guard Commanders still wrecked my personal planning for the next 14 days, or perhaps simplified it. As every old soldier knows, if you can’t take a joke then don’t join the Army.

Similar sort of offence too, involving wimmin: Harry gives nekkid girls a bear-hug, VJ placed an almost life-size cardboard stand-up of a busty and scantily-clad girl advertising Colt 45 beer on the top of the flagpole, after a rather wet night in the Corporals Club. Unfortunately, the guard made a dogs-dinner of getting it back down. I’m sure the RSM appreciated the mirth behind it, but he wasn’t happy about his flagpole getting a sudden case of Peyronie’s disease. For those unfamiliar with this affliction, Google is your friend.

No, not Anglians, I was a Sapper, the Corps of Royal Engineers. The incident described above occurred at Claro Barracks in Ripon, back in 1977, at the time it was occupied by 38 Engineer Regiment. I must go back one day before I croak to check if the flagpole has still got a delicate curve in it! With a few buddies we straightened it out as best we could, well, to the RSMs satisfaction anyway. At least I didn’t have to pay for a new one.

As for the ‘Viking’, my roots are in what was the Danelaw and it refers to a physical trait that gave rise to the family name – that gene is still active!

Pardon ? no off duty. How strange,,, the Army seeks honeymoon pics of ALL personel. No naked sex allowed? bejeesus really! This was perceved as a ‘private party’. Now, maybe those higher archies can go check out the cupboard and find some equiptment that might save some lives?

Hahahahahaha @ ‘freedon of press’. Good journalism does not rely on’ pix’, a sound knowledge of English language and Grammar are all that is required. Yes, we are free to purchase boobie pix from trashy part time comics dressed as newspapers, but the freedom of press was not in any kind of threat, as it was not contested that the incident could NOT be reported, just that the ‘pix’ were not really neccesary to ‘prove’ the incident occured , so the outcome was: the sun did what it always does and publishes anything deemed as ‘ sexy or naughty… being obsessed with other peoples sex lives or fun nights out.and showing topless and naked pictures in stead of concentrating on interesting pieces that affect the public. I am not a Royalist in any way, So I am not standing up for the person involved in the party, As far as I am concerned it was a private party and I had no business knowing what went on.

I didn’t think I’d ever say this, but Murdoch was right to publish the photos of Prince Harry. Whether or not people support him or are interested, it is clearly ‘in the public interest’ that the third in line to the thrown is exposing himself to women he barely knows. I don’t agree it is a frivolous or intrusive story, unlike if, say, a footballer were involved.